One of the pleasures of Hollywood films for me used to be work. Specifically, the depiction of labor in this or that industry as a powerful and understated way of drawing the viewer into the film’s world, of constructing both that world’s plausibility as well as its claustrophobia, the sense that this might be the only world there is. Somewhere along the way, Hollywood abandoned this aspect of movie-making to television where, at its best, series like “The Wire” preserve the old-fashioned sense that density of detail matters (such density is absent in a “Boardwalk Empire” or (returning to cinema) in “Guru”, and the absence is deeply felt), and separates an experience of the real from a canter through a film set. But television series have the luxury of time, and I find myself admiring the successful compression of cinema that much more.
